Jul 28 2008
Above the fold, two surreal videos. Below, a quick mention of some of the past week’s pieces on ePluribus Media that you may not have seen and will probably find very interesting. Opening volley: Surreal Videos — “The Googling” Part 1 and Part III:
| | |
After the flip, a brief preview of some of the great pieces currently on ePluribus Media.
Jul 28 2008
The Economic
Stimulus
There Was
An
Economic Stimulus?
No One
Told Me
Iraq clings to a rickety calm between war and peace
As the last troops sent in a U.S. military buildup leave, security has improved, but Iraqis tread carefully. They know no victor has been declared in the battles that will decide the nation’s future.
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2008
BAGHDAD — The departure this month of the last of the 28,500 extra troops sent in a U.S. military buildup leaves Iraq in a rickety calm, an in-between space that is not quite war and not quite peace where ethnic and sectarian tensions bubble beneath the surface.Politicians and U.S. officials hail the remarkable turnaround from open civil war that left 3,700 Iraqis dead during the worst month in the fall of 2006, compared with June’s toll of 490, according to Pentagon estimates.
Signs abound that normal life is starting to return. Revelers can idle away the hours at several neighborhood joints in Baghdad where the tables are buried in beers and a man can bring a girlfriend dolled up in a nice dress.Despite the gains, the political horizon is clouded: Shiite Muslim parties are locked in dangerous rivalries across central and southern Iraq. Kurds and Arabs in the north compete for land with no resolution in sight. U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters who turned on the group Al Qaeda in Iraq could return to the insurgency if the government does not deliver jobs and a chance to join the political process.
Worried Banks Sharply Reduce Business Loans
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: July 28, 2008
Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.
Two vital forms of credit used by companies – commercial and industrial loans from banks, and short-term “commercial paper” not backed by collateral – collectively dropped almost 3 percent over the last year, to $3.27 trillion from $3.36 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That is the largest annual decline since the credit tightening that began with the last recession, in 2001.
USA
For Obama, Hurdles in Expanding Black Vote
By Alec MacGillis and Jennifer Agiesta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 28, 2008; Page A01
MACON, Ga. — Amanda Bass, a volunteer for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, had already tried once to get Wilmer Gray to register to vote. But when she glimpsed him in a black T-shirt and White Sox cap again on a recent weekday at the main bus stop here, she was determined to give it another try.
This time, Gray, 21, agreed — but his bus pulled up before he could fill out the form. Bass jumped onboard and persuaded the driver to wait.“He was someone I’d worked hard to get,” said Bass, 19. “I couldn’t let him go, not after seeing how far he’d come.”
Jul 28 2008
The Economic
Stimulus
There Was
An
Economic Stimulus?
No One
Told Me
Iraq clings to a rickety calm between war and peace
As the last troops sent in a U.S. military buildup leave, security has improved, but Iraqis tread carefully. They know no victor has been declared in the battles that will decide the nation’s future.
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2008
BAGHDAD — The departure this month of the last of the 28,500 extra troops sent in a U.S. military buildup leaves Iraq in a rickety calm, an in-between space that is not quite war and not quite peace where ethnic and sectarian tensions bubble beneath the surface.Politicians and U.S. officials hail the remarkable turnaround from open civil war that left 3,700 Iraqis dead during the worst month in the fall of 2006, compared with June’s toll of 490, according to Pentagon estimates.
Signs abound that normal life is starting to return. Revelers can idle away the hours at several neighborhood joints in Baghdad where the tables are buried in beers and a man can bring a girlfriend dolled up in a nice dress.Despite the gains, the political horizon is clouded: Shiite Muslim parties are locked in dangerous rivalries across central and southern Iraq. Kurds and Arabs in the north compete for land with no resolution in sight. U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters who turned on the group Al Qaeda in Iraq could return to the insurgency if the government does not deliver jobs and a chance to join the political process.
Worried Banks Sharply Reduce Business Loans
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: July 28, 2008
Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.
Two vital forms of credit used by companies – commercial and industrial loans from banks, and short-term “commercial paper” not backed by collateral – collectively dropped almost 3 percent over the last year, to $3.27 trillion from $3.36 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That is the largest annual decline since the credit tightening that began with the last recession, in 2001.
USA
For Obama, Hurdles in Expanding Black Vote
By Alec MacGillis and Jennifer Agiesta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 28, 2008; Page A01
MACON, Ga. — Amanda Bass, a volunteer for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, had already tried once to get Wilmer Gray to register to vote. But when she glimpsed him in a black T-shirt and White Sox cap again on a recent weekday at the main bus stop here, she was determined to give it another try.
This time, Gray, 21, agreed — but his bus pulled up before he could fill out the form. Bass jumped onboard and persuaded the driver to wait.“He was someone I’d worked hard to get,” said Bass, 19. “I couldn’t let him go, not after seeing how far he’d come.”
Jul 28 2008
 Muse in the Morning |
Phenomena VIII: accepting
 Becalmed
|
Jul 28 2008
There is no precedent for this kind of massive ego fest on DocuDharma. budhydharma, the owner of this site had the following contention-
One of the most impressive things about YOU, is the breadth of knowledge YOU have accumulated. Smarts spanning from aardvarks to Zymurgy. If you ask a question on Dkos, ANY question, it WILL be answered, at the very least with a link or a clue!
It’s true we have a large variety of expertise.
I am shallow and one dimensional. I have a passing knowledge of a variety of things and it’s hard not to come up with a couple of suggestions for a Goggle search failing all else.
Among subjects I’m prepared to give advice on is computer repair since that’s my primary source of income. I only work with XP machines, Vista is unrepairable by definition. I’ll be happy to salvage the data on your drive and install a working XP system for you though, takes 2 days- one to salvage and one to install your new system.
I’m also considered by some a fairly reliable source on how the Daily Kos website works. You might wish to read an all-in-one digest or any of my 13 part New Users Guide or my less structured and indexed work collected as Welcome New Users.
Jul 28 2008
Reproduced from The Greanville Journal @ Cyrano’s Journal Online
One more warning on Obama and the Dems. Don’t say we didn’t tell you.
July 20th, 2008
Let’s Get Real / Guest editor: Morris BermanDear Friends,
I thought this article by John Pilger, the British journalist, on Barack Obama was too important to pass up, especially in view of the fact that most Americans have not read “Dark Ages America” and would hate it if they did. (I encourage you to cut, paste, and circulate this essay.) For those of you who did read it, you may remember I said that it was virtually impossible to get elected president if you did not support corporate America’s agenda and the national security state. The following essay strikes me as being an important antidote to the naive belief that Mr. Obama somehow represents a radical alternative to the status quo, or that the November election represents some sort of watershed in American history. -MB.
Published on Saturday, May 31, 2008 by The New Statesman (UK)
After Bobby Kennedy (There Was Barack Obama)
by John PilgerIn this season of 1968 nostalgia, one anniversary illuminates today. It is the rise and fall of Robert Kennedy, who would have been elected president of the United States had he not been assassinated in June 1968. Having travelled with Kennedy up to the moment of his shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June, I heard The Speech many times. He would “return government to the people” and bestow “dignity and justice” on the oppressed. “As Bernard Shaw once said,” he would say, “‘Most men look at things as they are and wonder why. I dream of things that never were and ask: Why not?'” That was the signal to run back to the bus. It was fun until a hail of bullets passed over our shoulders.
Kennedy’s campaign is a model for Barack Obama. Like Obama, he was a senator with no achievements to his name. Like Obama, he raised the expectations of young people and minorities. Like Obama, he promised to end an unpopular war, not because he opposed the war’s conquest of other people’s land and resources, but because it was “unwinnable”.
Should Obama beat John McCain to the White House in November, it will be liberalism’s last fling. In the United States and Britain, liberalism as a war-making, divisive ideology is once again being used to destroy liberalism as a reality. A great many people understand this, as the hatred of Blair and new Labour attest, but many are disoriented and eager for “leadership” and basic social democracy. In the US, where unrelenting propaganda about American democratic uniqueness disguises a corporate system based on extremes of wealth and privilege, liberalism as expressed through the Democratic Party has played a crucial, compliant role.
Jul 28 2008
Question: Peak Oil?
stable solid line | stable divided line | stable solid line
stable divided line | moving divided line | moving divided line
Earth over Fire evolving into Wind over Fire
|
36. Wounded Brightness |
37. Family Members |
 |
 |
Being weakened. It is good to work diligently on the situation. |
People are there for each other. |
Moving Line 5:
Viscount of Ji’s hidden brightness.
It is beneficial to persist.
Tactfully feigning ignorance, in order to avoid being hurt by someone. It is a good idea to persist doing that. (The viscount of Ji feigned madness, in order to escape the abuses of a king.)
Line 6:
Not brightness, but darkness.
At first ascending to heaven,
then going into the earth.
Things seemed so bright at the start, but are turning unlucky.
Jul 28 2008
This has to do with the bloodletting that’s going on right now. I think that it’s important that we remember that Docudharma is not a “more and better Democrats” community. Some of us used to post at a place like that. Some of us have chosen not to post there any longer. I’m sure each of us who’ve chosen that route have different reasons, and I’m sure that some of the reasons are the same. For the moment, those reasons don’t matter (at least in the context of this posting).
Jul 28 2008
After reading Grannyhelen’s essay and cogitating some, I have decided that I will not care, nor comment about, what John McCain says or does anymore. The case is proven, the election is over, Obama is going to cremate this guy.
Now some of you will say this is presumptuous and note that the republicans have stolen elections before. The only way they are going to steal this election is by gunpoint. Not gonna happen.
So unless McCain says or does something completely inane or hilarious, I will just sit back and watch the train wreck express unfold through November.
BTW, this being the case, Obama is free to be bold in taking strong positions on policy issues and taking people, particularly the current administration, on in a much more strident fashion.
Jul 28 2008
Not since the first utterance of Mission Accomplished has a politician proved himself to be so breathtakingly out of touch with reality.
This is John McCain on “This Week” with George Stephanopolous:
Steph: But there was a fundamental difference regarding the original reason to go to war [in Iraq]. He [Obama] said it would inflame the Muslim world and become a recruitment tool for Al Quaeda. You said and you wrote that it would lessen antipathy in the Muslim world and that we would be greeted as liberators. Wasn’t Senator Obama right about that?
McCain: I don’t believe so. We were greeted as liberators.
Link to the vid here: http://abcnews.go.com/video/pl…
